This is the opposite of my understanding of red light cameras. I always considered the supposed impartial application of the traffic law as the main benefit.
Here there was no attempt to photograph the driver rather than just assume the owner was responsible or would point to the responsible party.
Maybe they just stop running red lights?
Sometimes lights are just so poorly implemented, and drivers pass through them so often, it feels like whoever designed the intersection was actively goading drivers into running the light.
There are standards for this kind of thing, like if a light is on a road with a speed limit of X, then a yellow light has to last Y seconds. Imagine a yellow light that lasted .5s: you'd have to stand on your brakes and risk causing a rear end collision from the car behind you to even have a chance of not getting fined. That's the opposite of safety. My place wasn't that bad, but a defendant successfully demonstrated that the yellow light he was tricked by was illegally short, and a judge basically threw out all the tickets from it and others.
I mention this as just one example of specific light setups that suck. I bet you're right, and this is just a money grab from the local gov't.
Read this if you want to be angry today: https://ww2.motorists.org/blog/6-cities-that-were-caught-shortening-yellow-light-times-for-profit/
This does mean that if you're in the front of the pack and go about 15 over the speed limit, you won't "catch" the red light.
When you're not in the front of the pack it can be frustrating trying to travel just 3 or 4 miles with the red lights not even a full half mile from each other. Even late at night if you follow the speed limit, you are penalized. You will sit at every red light and look at the vast stretch of nothingness that has the right of way.
If they didn't do this to generate red light revenue, they could have done this to generate more revenue from the gas tax they collect by making people start & stop more often, and from sitting in traffic longer. But I suppose both things could be true. And no, I won't accept any other plausible explanations (/s, but holy heck is government awful here).
If the registered owner wants to claim that someone stole their car or was operating it without permission then there can be some very hefty punishment for making false statements if it can be proved that it was actually the owner in the car.
Some lights change timing depending on the time of day so e.g. rush hour might have different timing than midday or late night.
I also believe there are and likely still are cases of malicious short yellow lights at camera intersections to increase revenue.
I agree the automated systems are impartial, but they cannot ID you without it becoming super invasive.
In Europe and places with more omnipresent cameras, the laws are such that they can ticket you without needing to ID. The car gets the ticket so to speak.
For a criminal case, yes, they need to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" - which would require that you are positively identified as the driver.
For a civil case, they only need to prove by a "preponderance of the evidence" - which is a much lower standard.
This is why tickets from red-light cameras in many states are zero-point citations. You're still charged a fine, but there's no finding of guilt attached to the offense, which keeps it away from being considered a criminal matter. (This is the same way parking tickets work.)
I don't know what happens if the other person denies it though.
I'm in Canada and they issue you a fine without any ID. It goes straight to the registered car owner. Simple as.
The issue is that currently in FL there are points / demerits issued for violations, and these can cause the loss of a license, increases to insurance, etc. This is not a problem if an officer can ID you directly.
"I've been ticketed here twice, and it's ridiculous because they - it's just not fair. The person that - [let me start over] - the determination when you ran the light [of who is responsible], it's just a random whoever they want to pick ... [they] pick you to say, okay, you're gonna pay the ticket."
Obviously it's not actually random, it just defaults to the vehicle's owner, but with a generous reading I think you can interpret the quote this way based on the context of the article.
I think it's kind of irresponsible and lazy for the publication to use a verbatim verbal quote like this, when it isn't from someone notable who really needs to be quoted. If you don't understand what they're saying then don't put it in the article, and if you do understand then put in a sentence explaining what they're saying.
No camera I've ever seen tries to figure out who the driver is.
The logic is, it's your car, you're responsible for loaning it/owning it, so you get the fine. Don't like that? Don't loan your car out.
The trade off is no points are deducted from a driver's license. It's a pure fine, because they can't prove you were driving.
So the person just seems to be speaking gibberish to me.
edit:
More context...
The same logic applies for parking tickets. No one cares who parked the car, the car's owner gets the ticket... not the person who parked it. While I dislike red light cameras, the logic holds.
That's exactly what makes it unconstitutional here in the US. The Constitution specifically requires that they have evidence of who committed the crime _before_ charging someone with it. If you do it the other way around then you are making an assumption about who is guilty in advance of the evidence.
One interesting point is that the Judge also spent some ink criticizing the law because paying the ticket removes the ticket from your driving record. This means that habitual bad drivers can get away with the same infractions over and over again as long as they pay the fines quickly. This bypasses the State’s points system that was designed to punish repeat offenders by taking away their license.
I wonder how other state’s red–light camera laws hold up? Do they have the same flaws or are they written better?
FWIW, despite all this the speed cameras have been effective at reducing average speeds at problem points.
It's very common to just have fake plates / registration, with the plan in the case of an accident to just bail out and run.
There is a driver in NYC who gets almost 300 speeding tickets per year. They've paid their fines, so they're allowed to keep driving. Apparently, since the fines come from speed camera, they can't revoke their license.
https://www.jalopnik.com/1836395/worst-driver-in-ny-563-tickets/
Also, I think at that time some questionable arrangements surfaced between the operators of the automated ticketing system(s) and the towns and/or counties involved.
Coming to the part about issuing fines to the registered owner, you can nominate a different driver online here, when replying to the fine. The person nominated need to accept this as well before it is taken off the person to whom the vehicle is registered to.
Weird thing to point out, as in Florida, if you get any traffic citation, you just hire The Ticket Clinic for ~$80. If they don't get your ticket expunged or points eliminated, you get your money back. They don't lose often. You can keep racking up tickets, but not get any points, as long as you've got $80.
I live in a city where red light running is an epidemic. Drivers flagrantly just don't stop, and it kills people all the time. Red light cameras - plus actually revoking drivers licenses, and then actually throwing people in jail for driving on suspended licenses - are the only way to fix this.
It's far past time that drivers are no longer immune to consequences for violent, sociopathic behavior.
When was the last person killed by someone running a red light? When was the time before that?
The reality is that the people doing the policing are counting on humans not being infallible
Fines have become an important revenue stream, that's why they are being automated.
Now that this is becoming more widespread, there's a perverse incentive for governments to maximize the difficulty in avoiding fines. Lower the speed limit on roads designed for higher speeds for "safety", etc
There are many citizens, like me, begging for red light cameras so something can be done about the rash of crashes and killings from willfully reckless drivers.
In my experience preventative measures only work on people who are conscientious, they do not work on people who do not give a shit
I wouldn’t expect them to make driving safer for anyone, as enforcement doesn’t do anything to moderate the behavior of people that just don’t give a shit.
Maybe we should legislate traffic fines out of existence, and just use points. Or at the very least the fines should never go back in any recognizable way to the budget of the police doing the enforcement.
This is bad when applied to laws that were written with an exception of leniency and selectivity in enforcement, which is quite a lot of them. For running red lights though? I don't mind if the robots take you off the road automatically.
There are many places that don't even allow rights (or lefts) on red.
I got a right on red ticket once, and then I made it a point to obey the law -- especially at the intersections with the robots.
For things like traffic laws especially (where there are very simple cut and dry rules), why is it okay to break the law, and why is it not okay for robots to enforce the law?
As you should.
Besides, it's not a "the machine says so and not even the Supreme Court can overturn it" scenario. If there's genuinely a reason to cross into the intersection while the lights are red (such as there having been an accident, and a cop is temporarily managing traffic) the ticket will be waived. Heck, there will probably even be photographic evidence of it!
Most countries even have cops judge the tickets, just to already filter out those weird cases. The registration is done by a robot, but the policing is still done by a human.
Or, a deer jumped out on the side and you briefly looked away at it.
Or you could tell the driver behind you wasn't slowing down, so the safer option is to go.
Or. Or. Or. Real life is messy, and there's a million reasons to go though a yellow instead of slowing down.
This is common in the US as well. The machine takes the picture, filters out the illegible ones, and sends the rest to an actual officer who will issue the ticket.
Besides, it neatly solves the whole responsibility problem for self-driving car!
You yield to traffic from the left, which mean someone from a leftward entrance has priority, but they can actually be blocked by other traffic. So you have to not only consider yielding to them, but also whether they are yielding to someone else, thus giving you space to go. I see this computation mess people up all the time.
Also, judging intentions is much harder. On a multi-lane highway, it's very clear when someone is cutting across lanes to exit. And there's only one place they can be exiting. On a multi-lane roundabout, they might be taking the exit before your entrance, or the one after. Often people won't be signalling, or even giving incorrect signals.
When joining as well, if I'm emerging onto a busy road with two lanes in the direction I'm going, I will probably accept joining when the nearest lane is clear, even if the next lane is not, as long as the cars there don't look to be moving into the nearest lane. On a roundabout people can peel off at any time, and you should really wait until there's a gap in all lanes.
In some sense you have to start sometime, but there's going to be pushback from the accidents and injuries that will certainly happen in the interim.
There are also solutions for large vehicles where the center is raised but not impassible.
-stop in the roundabout
-stop before the roundabout and let their brain buffer for 30 seconds.
-somehow go the wrong way in the roundabout
-fail to yield to traffic in the roundabout
Is way too damn high. It makes traversing one a high stress situation since you have no idea if grandpa grunt and run in to you is about to perform a confusion based terror attack on the traffic control device.
Roundabouts have better throughput than a busy 4-way stop, but less throughput than a signaled intersection if the timing and sensing is reasonable (many signaled intersections don't have reasonable sensing). Roundabouts also have some pretty nasty worst case wait times; I'm really not looking forward to the state installing one near me on the approach to a car ferry; it won't be fun to wait for 200 cars to go by before you get a turn to go, and I expect long ferry lines to result in impatient people in the ferry line blocking the roundabout. Sometimes there's two hours between ferry loadings. Going to be some fun times.
Personally, I find it challenging to both look ahead to the right to confirm I have room to enter the roundabout, look to the left to confirm there is no traffic that I need to wait for, as well as looking far left and right to ensure there are no pedestrians crossing soon. Signaled 4-way perpendicular intersections have worse outcomes when a participant doesn't follow the signalling, but indication of right of way makes it easier to confirm at a glance if it's safe to proceed.
That’s not actually true. It’s entirely possible for them to have the same footprint.
Personally, I think we could replace a LOT of stoplights with roundabouts. Way better throughput and faster travel for everyone.
1. No parking minimums 2. Less free parking (e.g. street parking) 3. Policy supportive of self driving cars 4. More aggressive removal of driver licenses for human drivers with repeat violations 5. More aggressive penalties for driving without a license.
The average cost of car ownership is $0.69 per mile without insurance, $0.25 per mile to store it, and $0.49 per mile in societal costs (death, injuries, delays due to accidents). So about $1.43 per mile. I do not enjoy driving, so would add more cost per mile, maybe some would want to pay more but I do t see that much joyriding outside of teenagers and classic car enthusiasts, so I don’t think those that do it for pleasure is a large population.
Tesla cybercab is targeting $0.20 per mile. Waymo projections are $0.40 per mile by 2030. Assuming both hit $0.50 and are twice as safe, this is basically $0.75 per mile.
I don’t see may paying more to drive themselves. And I think as society there will be non economic reasons human driven cars get banned. Like MADD but for human cars.
So I expect 5 years and human cars will not make sense in many cases, 10 years new human car sales to be <50% current levels, 15 years you start seeing bans. 20 years bans common.
Reporting vehicle theft etc. can provide immunity from points on the car.
I’m glad my state found these unconstitutional as well.
One side issues the judge brought up is that no points go on the driver's record with a red light camera offense. The entire point of the points system is to get bad drivers off the road. But people can have numerous red light infractions and still keep their license.
Edit: Nevermind, I think crossing on yellow and catching a tenth of a second of red counts as running a red light. If it does, it’s something I did myself a few times (of course, all in the distant past, the statute of limitations has pased now …)
In fact, it's so bad that parts of the metro are reinstating red light cameras this year despite having decommissioned them years ago for similar legal reasons as what Florida has run into.
Then the state needs to start doing immediate impoundment of these vehicles. Add on massive fines before release of the car for repeat offenders and you'll see this dry up pretty quick.
In the jurisdictions I'm familiar with, this is the proper way to make a left-hand turn. Many intersections are designed such that this is the only realistic way to ever turn left (high traffic, no left arrow).
Most red light rules are written against entering the intersection on red. If you're already in the intersection, you're allowed to safely proceed through and out of the intersection on red. That can be challenging, of course, if oncoming traffic is running the red light.
Anyone involved in those yellow light lowering schemes should have been criminally charged.
I'm actually all for impartial enforcement of traffic rules via camera systems, but there are problems that need to be solved.
- There need to be standards for evidence required to assign an infraction to a driver.
- There need to be standards for setting yellow light durations to avoid municipalities reducing them to increase revenue
- There needs to be protection against municipalities outsourcing the whole project to a private entity where there is a combined financial incentive from the private entity and the municipality to issue more tickets without adequate oversight.
My town implemented red light cameras around 15 years ago and then took them back out. Locals noticed shortened yellow lights, and there were multiple issues found with how the private operator issued the tickets and with their contract with the municipality.
You can often do it pretty safely - stopped at a light with good visibility to see that there is no cross traffic. But also some people are just insane and blast through lights at 45 without stopping.
Cops haven't cared to enforce it for going on a decade.
The judge frames the red light camera scheme as a revenue generating scheme, not a public safety measure.
Additionally, "A distinctive feature of the statutory scheme is its assignment of guilt to the registered owner rather than the driver of the vehicle". and "If there are multiple registered owners, the citation is issued to the 'first' registered 'owner'". and the person whom the citation was issued to must sign an affidavit that includes the name, address, dob, of the person who was actually driving. The judge says this "...abandon(s) centuries time honored protections of hearsay as substantive evidence.".
"It is a foundational rule of constitutional due process that the government must prove every fact necessary to constitute an offense beyond a reasonable doubt before a person may be adjudicated guilty of a crime".
"Although nominally civil, traffic infraction proceedings retain every substantive hallmark of criminal prosecution..." "under Feiock, such proceedings are sufficiently criminal in form and function to invoke the full protections of due process..." - that's probably the core of the reasoning here.
"Section 316.074(1) provides in relevant part that "The driver of any vehicle shall obey..."" - the driver, not the registered owner.
I highly recommend reading the order. It's easy to follow and aligns with my understanding of the law within the USA.
But if you'd like to tell the fall, I'm sure some prosecutors wouldn't dig too hard to find the guilty party.
Edit: subpoena is not a criminal charge afaik is what I’m saying
10 minutes before the murder: Expect to get an accusation of accessory to murder, conspiracy to murder and a few additional tomes of the penal code. We all know you are innocent, but you should better find a good lawyer just in case instead of wasting your last free minutes arguing on the internet.
While a bit more extreme than your example, there have been multiple cases where the parents of a school shooter have been held responsible because they provided access to a weapon when there were warning signs.
On the less extreme end of the spectrum, this is the same reason why you have to pretend that you are buying a "water pipe for tobacco" and not a bong if you don't want to get kicked out of the headshop (in places where that is still illegal).
If they used the car with your permission, you should either be responsible for what they do with it, or be able to point to the person who was using it.
Sure, but I still don't know who they are, so I can't give their name over for either investigating the theft or reassigning the speeding/red light/parking fine.
If your car was magically stolen and returned, and you have no idea that it happened, or who could have done this... Well, that's certainly an interesting legal argument that you could make to a judge. I doubt he'll believe you.
> Although nominally civil, traffic infraction proceedings retain every substantive hallmark of criminal prosecution...
Is going to matter here. A moving violation (ex: red light) is quite different from a non-moving violation (ex: parking) in how they're handled, and often how they're classified.
Ex - my in state, a moving violation is a criminal misdemeanor, while a non-moving violation is entirely civil.
It feels like any civil case brought against an individual by a government is quasi-criminal.
disclaimer: I write software for court houses and am intimately familiar with the proceedings etc. in some jurisdictions these tickets will be outright dismissed and in others you may have to put up a bit of fight :)
But what about things like red flag laws, child support (like the cited case law), etc?
>The substance of particular contempt proceedings determines whether they are civil or criminal, regardless of the label attached by the court conducting the proceedings.
>See Shillitani v. United States, 384 U. S. 364, 384 U. S. 368 -370 (1966); Penfield Co. v. SEC, 330 U. S. 585, 330 U. S. 590 (1947); Nye v. United States, 313 U. S. 33, 313 U. S. 42 -43 (1941); Lamb v. Cramer, 285 U. S. 217, 285 U. S. 220 -221 (1932); Gompers v. Bucks Stove & Range Co., 221 U. S. 418, 221 U. S. 441 -443 (1911).
>Civil contempt proceedings are primarily coercive; criminal contempt proceedings are punitive. As the Court explained in Gompers:
>The distinction between refusing to do an act commanded -remedied by imprisonment until the party performs the required act; and doing an act forbidden -punished by imprisonment for a definite term, is sound in principle and generally, if not universally, affords a test by which to determine the character of the punishment.
>221 U.S. at 221 U. S. 443. Failure to pay alimony is an example of the type of act cognizable in an action for civil contempt. Id. at 221 U. S. 442.
>Whether a particular contempt proceeding is civil or criminal can be inferred from objective features of the proceeding and the sanction imposed. The most important indication is whether the judgment inures to the benefit of another party to the proceeding. A fine payable to the complaining party and proportioned to the complainant's loss is compensatory and civil. United States v. Mine Workers, 330 U. S. 258, 330 U. S. 304 (1947). Because the compensatory purpose limits the amount of the fine, the contemnor is not exposed to a risk of punitive sanctions that would make criminal safeguards necessary. By contrast, a fixed fine payable to the court is punitive and criminal in character.
The question in those cases came down to if the operators of the cam can be considered "accusers."
They widely considered that of course the cam itself didn't count as an accuser, but the question was how "automated" the system was. If there was a human who flagged it, the system was fine, if it was fully automated, they were unconstitutional.
Many states don't share this opinion, but an interesting argument nonetheless.
So in essence, if you know this is what they're doing, you're good. But they're not telling people so the money grift continues unabated and in place.
You could file a civil action for violation of constitutional rights, but under Roberts, SCOTUS has basically been ripping out all of the mechanisms that would let you file such suits.
You can file with the police, if they take it. You can also file as a private criminal complaint in many jurisdictions. However, it's up to the DA to approve it most of the time. There can be an appeal process where a judge would make a determination.
But yes, if the whole system is corrupt, then there's not much to do.
IIRC there was a point in time roughly around ~2017 when it happened in Redmond WA (i.e., in the town that the Microsoft HQ is in). I might be off by a year or two, but it doesn't really change the overall point.
TLDR: in under 2 years, that whole red light cam initiative got canceled and reverted, because the local stats showed that it just made things more dangerous on the roads (by significantly increasing the rate of rear-ending accidents at traffic lights).
[0] Unless the defendant waives that right and stipulates to the prosecutor's statement about the machine.
Tickets issued by these cameras are civil penalties issued to the owner of the vehicle, like parking tickets, rather than a criminal moving violation. This means the tickets are just as constitutional as parking tickets. It also means penalties are limited to fines and can't impact your driving privilege or insurance.
Hopefully other states can follow this pattern. Consistent, low-impact enforcement is better at preventing unwanted behavior than the rare and severe but also capricious enforcement performed by human police.
Wow! So if you have enough money, it's cool to run as many red lights as you want?
They're speed cameras, not red light cameras, and the revenues go towards street improvements to reduce speeding. So you could speed as much as you can afford, but eventually you'll have bought enough traffic calming infrastructure it'll be prohibitively difficult to keep getting tickets.
So when you start worrying about it as a cost center, then there is a perverse incentive to do things like shorten yellow lights. Short yellows have been proven to create more vehicular fatalities than people running red lights intentionally. And so the person who makes that decision to shorten yellows to boost tickets is effectively committing murder to keep the system “working”. Which is disgusting. Ghoulish, even.
It is literally better in such situations to simply dismantle the system than keep it running.
That said, the bill addresses this category of abuse directly: if a speed camera fails to reduce 85th percentile speeds or violation volumes within 18 months it must be removed.
There are also substantial limits on how the revenues can be spent. If you are interested in this topic it's worth a read: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB645
As you say, it encourages short yellows. I am aware of having "run" one red light in my life--got ticketed for it. The yellow timing was set as short as legally permitted--a driver had a narrow window to decide go or stop. Unfortunately, what happens when neither is an option? I was in the left turn lane and past the decision point. I was already slowing when the light went yellow, I saw it and knew there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
There's also the problem that a huge number of red light tickets are issued to people who "run" red lights in a completely normal and safe manner: making a right turn on red. Car #1 stands as far forward as they can without being in the cross traffic path, the other cars line up behind. First car goes, the rest move forward. Nobody pays attention to the stop line--but the camera does.
In the real world, neither speed nor red light cameras pay for themselves except when something about the situation causes a problem--and it would be better addressed by fixing the true problem. Likewise, I have never seen a cop watching a situation for offenders unless there was something out of sync between the law and the road. Half of the traps I've seen over the years have disappeared when the root cause was fixed.
It just turns speeding into something you can buy.
Sadly money and power buying freedom of law isn’t restricted to road rules.
Also, I am a bit biased here after working at flock.
Revenu generation is a bonus point: in my country taxes that incentive smokers to quit are directed to healthcare and most of the speeding tickets revenue goes to road maintenance and safety.
I’d prefer a public handling but the trend is privatization with everything : from health to education to water treatment. Even military assets! IMHO red light tickets enforcement is as much important.
Your mixing up states. California's law from above comment is NOT about running red lights.
Don’t want the state to generate revenue? Literally just stop speeding and stop running red lights.
I disagree. This is acknowledging that these are revenue products rather than safety enhancement.
If you want safety enforcement, put a damn cop there. It WILL work. This isn't hard. People are creatures of habit and you don't need to adjust the behavior of very many of them to make the whole group change.
If you don't want to put a cop there, you don't want safety enforcement.
But driving reckless and having a big well protected car helps of course, so everyone speeding would want even bigger and better armored cars.
Those daring to drive light vecicles or even bicycles, screw them?
Here in germany we managed to have automated red light tickets, without saving video at all btw. Just a picture (or multiple) of the incident. The picture is tied to the traffuc lights logic so knows when red light was on.
Now I am not really a fan of them, but they do work without mass surveillance.
It can also give permission for unwanted behavior. Cf. the Haifa study, where the rate of late pickups increased when daycares added a fine. One explanation is the fine turned a complex moral obligation into an ordinary financial transaction.
> Raise the prices. Then raise the prices. Then when you're done with that, raise the prices.
1st offence = base fee
2nd offence = base fee + minimal % of wealth fee
3rd offence = base fee + higher % of wealth fee
offences thereafter = goto 3rd offence until some breaking point condition like gaol/jail.
Otherwise the rich will happily pay to do whatever the hell they want.
> prove your claim by providing some evidence that the richer you are the more speeding tickets you get.
How/where did the grandparent comment claim that the rich get more speeding tickets? Even if the rich speed at a lower rate, would that make %-based fines a negative improvement?
> a problem that doesn’t exist
My assumption was the speeding is a problem no matter whether rich or poor, and that both exist. Is there disagreement there?
Instead, I think their point was that even a $100 fine for a poor person may impact their ability to pay for groceries, childcare, etc, whereas for someone who has $10 million, etc., even a $1,000 fine will not impact their ability to pay for groceries, childcare, etc as they still have $9,999,000.
Kind of like if enough parents paid the late pickup fee, eventually the daycare could afford a van for dropoffs.
No one, gun to their head and hand on a Bible, should defend a status quo where the only way to afford a median house is to have twice the median income.
They fined parents (IIRC) ~$3 per late pickup. Rerun the study with a $300 fine and let’s see how it pans out. It’s an interesting finding, but that then people take it to mean that fines don’t work (no matter their size) is insane.
We had to keep two staff there, and they would split the fine.
Many times we got stiffed.
Edit: for reference, our fee was about $14/day to keep the kid, so it was a pretty stiff penalty.
(apologies for the immediate edit, changed my wording)
I understand that you could not keep the child till you were paid (kidnapping and ransom shouldn't be a business plan!), but you could refuse them future service until they paid.
And then there's the challenge of keeping people on staff at all when parents consistently make the staff work late.
Beyond that, it seems like a good way to achieve the objective of convincing parents to not offload externalities onto others by being late.
Let's say you have a job interview. You're 5min late, so they either don't hire you, or the receptionist says the interviewer is now not available. Are you now due the salary, because you being this late 5min cost you a lot of money?
If you in a private contract reject the terms of paying $5 per minute late, well then the other party now knows you plan to be late a lot, so they'll be glad if you take your business elsewhere.
Keeping people from being able to go home after their workday, effectively forced overtime, is incredibly disrespectful. And even if "it's not your fault", you are the only one that could have prevented it. So incentives should be in place that you don't. $5 per minute sounds fair.
If you force me to stay late for a full hour you'd BETTER pay me triple digits. But in this case the $300 for an hour may have to be shared among several people.
If the ticketing decision made by an automated camera system is deemed acceptable when issuing mere fines akin to parking tickets, but deemed unacceptable when issuing other penalties (which don't have this wealth inequity issue we are discussing now, at least not exclusively), that's effectively a poor tax.
There’s a lot of compelling evidence that these systems are just revenue machines.
I don't think our society is ready for the combination of automatic enforcement and truly punitive penalties. We readily demonize the accused; just having your mugshot taken can end your employability. Yet many of us break laws daily -- speeding, jaywalking, watering the lawn during the day, even plugging in a microwave oven without a building permit in some jurisdictions -- and society still works because we don't expect much enforcement. We are heading toward a future where everyone will have marks on their permanent record, but today our society tut-tuts, or much worse, at anyone who does.
I see all the time on the Internet (and even IRL once) people make claims like, "oh, carbon taxes will just increase CO2 output, you know like in that Israeli daycare study." Drives me nuts.
Are fines the best possible solution to this particularly traffic problem? I have no idea. I'm not an expert in this area. But I am highly confident that whatever relation it has to the Haifa daycare study is so incredibly tenuous that it is not worth mentioning.
The reason I said anything in the first place is that I object to automatically administered punishment. Either separately can be OK. Automatically administered? No problem, that's called a tax (including use taxes like tolls). Punishment? Then we'd better have due process, and yeah, it's going to be expensive and labor-intensive to administer, but that's critical in a free country. That's why I called out the "is better than" quote. I think it's strictly worse.
"Domino’s confirmed it knew of 20 people who died in crashes involving its drivers in 1988 (the National Safe Workplace Institute would later claim Domino’s delivery drivers had about the same death rate as miners, who had a fatality rate of ~35 per 100k)."
For that same period, the death rate per 100k of young drivers was 46 per 100k https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00044682.htm
And to compare truck drivers 27 per 100k: https://www.malmanlaw.com/malman-law-injury-blog/is-being-a-truck-driver-dangerous/
Is this a dominos problem, or a young drivers problem or...
Australia, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, etc, have well-enforced traffic laws. Speeding is the exception rather than the rule, unlike the United States, where one can expect the flow of traffic to be 10-20 miles per hour over the posted limit. Yet these societies don't suffer from an excess of enforcement or consequences in other areas. For example, it is legal to walk around in public with a bottle of beer in virtually all of Europe.
What we have seen in the United States is a reduction of many hardly-enforced laws. Jaywalking and minor drug possession have been decriminalized in several US states. This is due to voter interest. It will continue to be up to the public to decide what do to when enforcement can catch up to excessive laws.
Yes, you can sometimes walk around legally with a beer bottle here.
Make it a tiny % of net worth, with a modest minimum and watch EVERYONE obey. Or at least something meaningful to everyone, or don't make it a fine. Use some other carrot or stick.
Enlightenment and utopia across that simple bridge
I lack the context and knowledge to understand how this would work, but I am curious (enough to ask but not enough to google it, admittedly).
One thing about daycares is that you will essentially never find "someone who's barely making ends meet" and "a billionaire" with kids at the same daycare, so a surcharge for out-of-normal-expectations service does not need to be designed to address both cases.
(In fact, you'll probably not find a billionaire with kids at any daycare, their hired childcare workers won't be shared with other people, and will probably be adequately compensated up front in a way which anticipates a fair degree of schedule variability.)
OTOH, with red light cameras, you also don't need to scale the fine to work with both, because the entire purpose is to bind the lower classes while exempting the upper from any substantial burden. (The least cynical explanation is that it is to discourage behavior which might incur liability grossly exceeding the mandatory level of insurance company by those least able to cover the cost of that liability, thereby avoiding uncompensated harms, but the realistic explanation is...not so generous.)
This is very common outside of the US, btw.
You know what they say: a fine makes something legal for an amount of money.
And for daycares, I think a lot of parents saw it just like that: a cheap way to keep the kid away from them for longer.
I then moved to Amsterdam and became the biggest fan of continuous, always-on ANPR speed cameras. On some freeways, your car is recorded at certain checkpoints and EVERYONE driving over the speed limit ALWAYS gets a fine.
Why? Because they are properly implemented (only high-risk areas), very well communicated (tons of signage), consistently applied (no crying your way out of a ticket, no racial profiling), purpose targeted (you get a speeding ticket, not a bunch of other fines at the whim of a cop), and correctly incentivized (ticket revenue does not immediately go to the local police or city).
Income proportional fines solve the problem. The fine should be a deterrent, but not create crippling debt. That is impossible without taking into account the income of the infractor.
Trading a little liberty for a little safety and all that.
Is said in place of using actual arguments or evidence?
The "problem" being solved with cameras is "cops aren't generating enough traffic ticket revenue"
Looking even at normal arterial streets, many streets in Seattle are marked 25, but you'd be hard-pressed to find even a cop going under 30 most of the time.
I truly don't understand US road design. The construction of the road and the posted speed limit almost never are even gently correlated other than on a few select residential side streets in a few select cities who have rebuilt streets based on safety studies.
The local cops here have always just run plates for stolen vehicles. Getting a ticket is almost unheard of. I don't know what their deal is, but you can speed right past them in the other lane, or if they're just parked on the corner.
I'm guessing you still can't pass them on a two-lane road without poking their ego.
I'd love if the police enforced this insanely dangerous behavior instead of trying to catch people going 10 over on the highway.
In my city, certain traffic lights literally turn off at night. There's not enough traffic flowing to justify them.
In my neighborhood there used to be a traffic light that would be red for a long time despite not usefully regulating any traffic whatsoever. It stopped traffic despite the fact no other traffic could possibly conflict with it. People realized this and routinely ran that light with zero consequences. At some point the city realized it too and redesigned the traffic controls so that the light would be green in this situation.
The correct action is to constantly bug your local representative to fix the problem, not break a law written in blood.
Jaywalking laws were also written in blood. People break them every single day regardless because they have eyes and can look both ways to determine if it is safe to cross the street before actually doing it.
Obviously, if you can't see the road where the cars will come from, then you cannot know if there are any cars coming towards you in a potentially intersecting trajectory.
At 60kmh a vehicle travels 16 meters per second. In freedom units: at 37mph a vehicle travels 54 feet per second.
A vehicle will materialize out of nowhere and crash into you.
God I hate these sort of responsibility shirking opinions and their peddlers.
I do this several times a day in a major US city for close to a decade now and I've never had a close call closer than the "two people trying to pass each other in the hallway" routine with a driver trying to take a right on red.
Vehicles and everything else on this rock flying through space obey the same laws of physics.
If the traffic on a road goes X miles per hour, then simply don't cross it where you don't have a sufficiently long line of sight. If crossing where the lines of sight are sufficient is not tractable due to traffic volumes or road construction then cross at a marked crossing, intersection that interrupts traffic flow or use proper body language and someone will stop for you.
Sure, you might get exceptionally unlucky and choose to cross at the exact minute some car that's a few standard deviations above the norm but you might also get hit by lightening.
My thesis has been an uptick on BS calls. Said differently the bad neighborhoods have gotten worse and funding for police is mismanaged.
A big part of traffic stops was to find weed and trade up for an arrest. With legalization, they’ve shifted to camera work, which has gotten even bigger with Flock.
Depending on the situation, it might be dangerous for a cop to also run a red to give chase, so consider it might be their job to let it go.
But I'm guessing you are only correct sometimes. I bet some of them can be live-viewed, or track license plates.
These camera systems have always been about surveillance. Flock adds the Silicon Valley software process, while the older tech is “law enforcement tech”.
There are real surveillance arrays, please worry about those instead.
The idea that AI enforcement won't be just as corrupt and capricious as any other form of government run extortion is bonkers. You're talking systems with less oversight than openclaw being run by people whose entire goal is to make as much money as possible, no matter the source. Private, unaccountable companies with effectively no oversight with the legal right to send you invoices for things you might or might not have done, and the cost for disputing it might well exceed the cost of just paying it and getting it over with.
Why are Californians so hellbent on giving their money to the government, given the absolute shitshow that is their budget and track record? The only good things that have happened in California for decades comes out of private enterprise, but all the crazy nonsense is fostered and maintained, apparently quite vigorously, by elected governments.
I'm furious that 10% of my federal income taxes end up going to California's bullshit, I can't imagine what it would be like having to live there.
Seriously, it's bordering on levels of insanity right up there with thinking that Jefferey Epstein would make a great babysitter. Do people just not pay attention? Does the weather just make everyone complacent and docile?
Speed cams and automated gotchas allowing the government to raid your pocketbook are a bad thing. There's no framing or circumstances where that's good.
Your taxes getting evenly distributed is one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that removing California from the US would either increase your taxes or require reductions in federal spending.
In the specific case this thread is about - that of red light cameras - presumably the camera produces a photograph showing a red light, a vehicle going through it, and the vehicle's license plate. Plus a video, showing the light was orange for the legally required amount of time, and showing the absence of any exceptional circumstances (e.g. ambulances).
As law enforcement goes, that really seems like the least capricious, highest oversight law enforcement I can imagine.
Some cameras only produce a photograph. Some produce a video with the light status showing on it--but there have been cases that's wrong, the camera recording what it was programmed to do which didn't match the real lights.
You need actual video of the scene that can be examined and which is of sufficiently good quality that the identity of the car can be confirmed. Very often it does not exist.
Likewise, speed cameras should record enough that one can do a time/distance calculation to confirm the speed--because the system can be miscalibrated or can be fooled by large, flat surfaces.
Or look what has happened with breathalyzers. Last I heard if a judge grants the discovery request for the source code the case gets dropped. And the whole thing is based on a flawed principle in the first place: the ratio of breath alcohol to blood alcohol varies substantially between people--setting it for average isn't accurate. As a screening test for doing a blood draw, fine, but it should not be allowed anywhere near the courtroom. (Some states get this right, some do not.)
And, yes, ambulances. I forgot about another time I know I ran a red light. Something with lights/sirens was coming up behind, no lane was empty, I was in the only lane with one car. Lots of space at the intersection, I pulled forward and turned hard right, clearing my lane without actually entering the cross path.
So what does this say about the legitimacy of having those fines affect your license and insurance when issues by a real flesh and blood cop?
Sounds to me like that by default they shouldn't be affecting squat because there's an implicit "the cops will mostly only pull people over if it's unconscionably bad" filter going on.
Given that they insure cars more than drivers, it seems kinda reasonable that they be allowed to look at tickets for cars.
If this is the case, what are the consequences of not paying the fine? I interpret your statement to mean that they can't prevent registration of your car. Can they tow you in SF for unpaid fines?
I was going 5 over the reduced speed limit, in the slow lane with rush hour traffic. That thing must've issued thousands of tickets.
> the courts solved this by deeming at least certain uses of red light cameras illegal.
This is incorrect. The court in Florida said certain arrangement of the statutory basis (a different one than in CA) for red light cameras is illegal.
I'm not even disagreeing with you here, but that's a huge assumption yo make and you are granting pretty broad authority to the state in the name of that goal. Where do you draw the line of power the state shouldn't have despite it using the authority today towards pro-social goals?
Even forgetting that, all this means is people that don't care about getting a ticket, either because they won't pay or it's a such a small amount to them that they don't care. just do what they want. Nothing is being "enforced", just taxed.
The structural problem is that revenue goes to program costs and traffic calming, not to anyone harmed by speeding, which makes the fines punitive in character under any substance-over-label analysis.
The lack of DMV points and criminal record weakens the argument somewhat, but under California's substance-over-label approach those omissions aren't dispositive. They merely show the legislature knew how to stay on the civil side of the line, not necessarily that it succeeded.
If a court finds the penalties punitive in character, the owner-liability structure becomes a compounding problem: California's state due process protections are arguably more robust than federal, and imposing a punitive fine on a registered owner without proof they were driving, while burden-shifting exculpation to them looks increasingly difficult to sustain.
Tha owner is ultimately civily liable if the vehicle is parked in a way that it shouldn't be. Extending that same civil liability to the active operation, as opposed to only the consequences of active operation, seems perfectly reasonable.
That is a definite punishment for anyone that cares enough about driving that they were doing it in the first place, while also clearly not being revenue generating (in fact it prevents future fine revenue). I'm not sure that would wash in the car-centric States though (but it would make it an even juicier punishment). But since you don't get banned immediately, it's potentially low-impact on a per-ticket basis.
Unlike improper parking, running red lights should impact said privilege as potential consequences are way more serious.
In my own experience, when they took down the red light cameras in my area now people are not afraid to run red lights ~2 to ~3 seconds after it's red. See this kind of thing on a regular basis. Every now and then there's a serious accident.
Council et al., 2005 -- https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/05048/05048.pdf
This is pretty damning, in my opinion. AKA we did some cheap analysis on a small dataset, without confidence or effect size, and just agree with the people running the programs.
"The intent of the multivariate regression analysis was to confirm the direction of the effect, not to establish effects with statistical significance or to assess the size of the effect. To undertake analyses for these purer purposes would have required a substantially larger database, much more precision in the estimate of economic effect at each site, and more accurate specification and measurement of the independent variables. For the purposes of this current investigation, it suffices that both the univariate and multivariate analyses are reasonably in accord with the perceptions that are commonly held by those involved in red-light-camera programs."
Sometimes an intersection simply has bad luck, draws more accidents than anything about it would cause. Put a camera there, you'll see an "improvement".
I'm skeptical of this claim because the red light camera operators are usually contracted by municipalities. They don't have any direct control over the light cycles.
(Yes, obviously they can be in cahoots with the municipality, but I would be surprised if that was common and not the exception)
Do you have any evidence of this?
Why are we discussing cameras?
Fines (and points) are better of course.
The court says that criminal rules should apply because points are at stake, while civil penalties are usually restricted to fines, but I don't buy that argument. We have plenty of non-money civil remedies. Code enforcement departments can require changes to property. Family courts can make all kinds of requirements. It's not outside of constitutional bounds for a traffic rule to result in forfeiting a license without criminal proceedings.
All of which are an affront to people's rights.
The fact that we use a "special word" (civil) for the category of laws where we won't throw you straight in prison if you don't comply, we'll add the extra step of waiting for noncompliance and then charging someone with contempt doesn't fundamentally alter the relationship between the enforcers and the people, so why should the people have to put up with their rights being ignored in those cases?
Rights are not unlimited.
You don't have some inherent human right to ignore building codes, or to retain full custody of your child in the event of a divorce.
That means the building inspector can't just waltz into your home uninvited, ICE can't kick in your door because your maid is brown and the government can't just put up cameras and start dragnet fining people for rules that only really exist on paper and are used to make it procedurally easier to go after behavior that's bad for subjective reasons.
Second, the fact that legislative bodies may pass and enforcers may enforce stuff that violates people's rights (rental inspections and civil asset forfeiture) come to mind because the size of the harm and the manner in which it is targeted keeps it below the "get everyone pissed off" level doesn't make it not a violation of people's rights. Funny you mention building code. The manner in which building (zoning really, since building code is basically the public adoption of 3rd party standards via the zoning code) code is written and enforces is complete dogshit and would not hold up to rigorous scrutiny (and generally does not, in the incredibly rare occasion is sees it), but between the fact that it's cheaper to comply and that the worse abuses are generally targeted at exactly the kind of people who no judge will have sympathy for (much like civil asset forfeiture was initially) mean the general population is not too up in arms about it since it's
Now, before you put words in my mouth as the kind of people who say things like "rights are not unlimited" are in my observation very apt to do, I'm not saying don't have building code. I'm saying don't violate people's rights to have it, or anything else. It's nowhere near enforced to the letter anyway so walking the actual letters back to match what can be enforced without violating people's rights should be no big deal. And the same is goes for like red light cameras.
This makes me question many existing civil things. Obviously child support, as in the case law. But also, things like red flag laws. It seems like any civil law that would apply criminal-type contemt penalties is unconstitutional.
Higher quality cameras equipped with facial recognition connected to a database to issue a ticket to the correct person (driver), or
Hire more traffic officers to sit at traffic intersections to catch red light offenders, which will scale in cost by the size of the city, so
Pick your poison
So yeah, in some cases you might get out of it by feigning ignorance, but it seems to be a sensible compromise between facial recognition and giving up.
Where I live, there is one nasty radar placed so that people have to break rather hard, when leaving town as in few meters before end sign, on a steeply downhill slope, when there is just straight empty road ahead. Those who don't know get flashed frequently. There is no pedestrian crossing, no buildings, just empty fields. Locals complained and municipality said - sorry, we know, but its generating too much revenue and municipality needs that cash and became dependent on that. Basically FU. I know about few others in either Switzerland or France which have very nasty locations, in order to trap as many as possible, in places with 0 actual risk to anybody.
They also love putting temporary radars in some train underpasses which also go steeply down, so its trivial go few kms over the limit if you don't constantly brake and ie actually watch traffic around. Since they are well hidden and people see them at last moment and slam brakes hard, it properly increases risks of accidents, especially with mixture of cyclists or scooters/motorbikes. But that doesn't seem the priority anymore.
I am not saying they don't make sense in some places especially around pedestrian crossings, but its trivial to get 'addicted' to steady cash flow and then friction to change situation is maximal. Thats the point where it stops its primary purpose and becomes self-serving bureaucracy self-feeding loop.
I only mean that all revenues collected from the fines must be distributed to the public at large. They must never be treated as a revenue source for the government.
Sin taxes are meant to reduce bad behavior - or incentivize good behavior. Ideally you'd collect $0 in red-light fines because everyone's following the law. If some politician's budget or private company's revenue stream depends on traffic fines they have adverse incentives. I don't want my city council member voting against traffic safety initiatives because it makes people better drivers and that means less money for some other city program.
Or in the case of a private company contracted to run the cameras, don't give a private company a contract to run the cameras. At least not a contract where they get paid in proportion to the fines collected.
No one should profit off bad behavior. No government program's funding should have to depend on people driving badly.
You're putting those public services and their sources of funding in conflict with each other.
We have this issue with imported deer, that the local hunters will gladly reduce their population, but not to zero. And baits and other methods are prohibited. Deer were likely imported for hunting, and hunters effectively protect the species from eradication by killing off their competition (roos mostly), and permitting them to breed within limits. Not to mention trying to protect them politically.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-05/hunters-call-for-end-to-sa-deer-eradication-program/103421454
So yeah, guys walking with rifles in the woods cause deer.
Sources:
1. yes I got them before when I was driving a lot in Queens, New York City had legal counsel regarding fighting these red light camera tickets.
2. NYC government is quadrupling those cameras as it's a really cheap way to increase municipal revenue and reduce traffic speed. It's working if you drive in Queens NYC you will notice most traffic obey to the speed limits. https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/1q8fm89/nyc_to_quadruple_intersections_with_red_light/
Sound like, in typical NYC fashion, its also a great way to pad time for the NYPD and get some quid pro quo from their Union.
Of course they don't want to be identified after blankly admitting they were ticketed; i.e. they were the one driving, in fact.
Entitled prick: running red lights, and crying "unfair".
> The person that does the determination when you ran the light, it's just a random. Whoever they want to pick, pick you to say, okay, you're gonna pay the ticket."
Complete nonsense; why is the article even quoting this mouth breather?
These cameras work in terms of determining that the given vehicle was involved in the alleged violation. There is nothing random about it. It's not randomly pinning a drummed up allegation on vehicles not involved in a violation. The choice of pinning the ticket on the registered owner is also not random.
Typically these systems take at least two shots, moments apart, one showing the vehicle not yet in the intersection (whose traffic light is clearly red) and then the same vehicle in the intersection a split second later, providing evidence that the vehicle entered the intersection on a red.
In context of this article, being ticketed does not require to be the person driving.
Fine = 2 ^v^2 ^n^2 ^p^2
Where v is velocity % higher than the speed limit, n is the number of speeding occurrences in the past 12 months, p is the normalised price of the vehicle. Obviously these parameters could be tweaked.
The result should be that frequent violations cost much more, cost is proportional to the increased danger, and rich people feel the cost of violations.
It isn't a "social experiment" to deter crime, and calibrating punishment to have an actual deterrent effect has a long precedent. If it is "nanny state" policy to set speed limits that penalise repeat offenders and hoons in high powered cars, you will find it has broad community support.
Meanwhile the solution to this problem in the UK is to reaffirm that you are in fact guilty by default unless by happenstance you are determined not to be by an unfairly chosen panel of blind and deaf mice.
I believe the first time it was because the photos were processed out of state. Apparently it didn't stick!
Nothing happens if you don't pay them; state congressmen have burned their own citations publicly.
A similar law could eliminate most of the problems with civil forfeiture.
In the UK it's ridiculous, barely any speed cameras and those that are there are clearly marked (legally have to be). Everyone just slows down for the speed cameras and then start speeding again after.
I've actually heard people say that the above is effective because it makes people slow down where it's important. Or, you know how about people just don't fucken speed in general?
If it were up to me they'd be everywhere, totally unmarked and all revenue from fines would go to charitable causes to rule out the "but they just do it for da money!11" bs - no, they're doing it to stop people speeding and killing someone for fuck's sake.
Stop speeding.
Getting a ticket also does nothing to prevent you from speeding in the first place (the ticket does not arrive to you instantly, you're still speeding on the road).
Road safety is an infrastructure problem, but it is always easier and cheaper to just put a camera and collect money. While designing roads that you cannot go too fast, and actually building them cost money.
They just want the cheapest option to say "we did something". Not the safest.
It only doesn’t work if the system is half assed. But I agree that in low speed pedestrian areas, the built form is a better solution, but knowing you will get caught is also effective (if you accept the privacy tradeoffs).
> The defendant argued the statute unconstitutionally requires the registered owner to prove they were not driving — instead of requiring the government to prove who was behind the wheel.
Bit like having to prove you weren't the one breaking in, rather than the police having to prove you were guilty.
In light of this, seems like a no-brainer no one could disagree with.
In the same way, if your car fails emissions tests, you can’t register it and it’s the responsibility of the owner to ensure that their car meets emissions standards.
Shift the problem onto individuals, make it a burden for the public. Typical HN attitude
Using this line of thinking, it will be a short time until you’re responsible for what a criminal does with your stolen vehicle; after all, you failed to secure it.
I hope you get exactly what you’re asking for, and all the implications thereof (but in a state far from me). I feel certain you won’t enjoy it.
Also I mentioned criminal vs civil penalties being treated differently - I don’t believe the same scenarios apply to both. AND if you can prove that you lent a car to someone who got you a speeding ticket, then it’s on them - just that the owner of the car is responsible by default.
I hate these arguments that doing anything to restrict the deadliest machines in history is impossible because it discriminates against the poor. It doesn’t. But having a society where driving is the only option does, so I am all in favor of alternatives. But I also think that we should improve safety for cars when possible as well
But someone borrowing it with permission isn't?
It doesn’t seem that different to extend this to camera tickets.
It is commonplace to drive, but has high potential for danger and death. It seems ok to me to have a level of care required for owning a vehicle, and that includes being mindful of who you share your vehicle with.
Same thing with guns - if you blindly lend a gun to an acquaintance and they shoot a school, you will absolutely be charged with some crimes, either accessory to murder or manslaughter, where you have to prove that you weren’t being negligent by giving it to them. Guns are dangerous and owning them bears a higher level of responsibility to the owner.
Vehicles kill more people, they also deserve responsibility to own. If somebody breaks laws with your vehicle, it’s your responsibility by default unless you prove otherwise.
Yeah that's what they said when ICE was unilaterally kicking in doors.
The way I see it anything that would prompt the government to use violence upon you without you taking action to escalate deserves the same level of protection for the accused as a "real" criminal matter.
Yes I'm aware this includes just about everything beyond library late fines and would break the system at least for awhile. Worth it. The government shouldn't be able to assess the same penalties (fines) and threaten the same enforcement actions (forfeiture of property, arrest for nonpayment, etc, etc) as they do in criminal matters and side step people's rights simply because they say it's civil. The rights and procedural protections are what they are not to prevent the application of a label, but to prevent abuse at the hands of the government.
Civil offenses are not.
---
Mild speeding, no seatbelt, broken taillight are civil.
DUIs, reckless driving, hit-and-run are criminal.
All vehicular offenses, but different punishments.
---
Unauthorized immigration to the US is NOT punishable by incarceration. (It can result in deportation to the nation of origin.)
And what happens if you don't pay civil (or criminal) fines? A bench warrant gets issued and you get arrested. And if you get a contempt charge in all this guess where you can go?
The only "real difference" between a criminal offense where they "can" jail you but usually just fine you is procedural.
I would rather catch a bullshit DUI than have a local building commissioner coming after me for some violation. They're both $10k problems, but with one of them you have "real rights"
>Unauthorized immigration to the US is NOT punishable by incarceration.
The problem wasn't what the statutory punishment is or isn't.
The problem was the unilateral nature of it. Hence all the hoopla over warrant types, sloppy behavior, etc.
Some other thoughts: An illegally parked car can be fined, impounded, booted. Car with outstanding parking tickets can also have all of the above. But typically the driver wouldn't see points or a moving violation for any of these offenses. For example: NYC you can get blocking the box tickets written by parking enforcement but they don't carry the weight of a moving violation like a police officer's ticket would. (and if you don't pay it, it's not the driving privilege that's suspended in the state, it's the car itself that would be targeted for booting/impounding, etc)
> In light of this, seems like a no-brainer no one could disagree with.
If someone shoots a person with your gun, you gonna say it wasn't you and expect them not to question any you further? Not very no-brainer, is it?
This is how it works in Poland and, I assume, most/all of EU and the rest of the world.
As usual, Europe doesn't care about internal consistency when it comes to rights. They just legislate (or rule) whatever 'works' for the current definition of 'works'.
> If someone shot a person with your gun, you gonna say it wasn't you and expect them not to question you further? Not very no-brainer, is it?
Nobody has said you can't be questioned.
Europe is a nonsense in this regard: you have rights, except all the special cases when you don't. You have a right to free speech, except for all the ways in which you don't. You have the right to silence, except when you don't.
Which is also true in the US, after all they restrict obscenity as a form of speech. It's just that they have much fewer exceptions.
Sure. And you advocate that in exchange in US you get havoc on the roads because anyone can say "it wasn't me speeding 50 miles over the limit, bite me"? Is that the freedom you want?
It's literally not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
> Belgium 7.3
> Slovenia 7.0
> US 6.9
> France 5.8
Never mind all the other countries that do have presumption of guilt, which are also comparable in per-mile road deaths.
And the ones with presumption but which _are_ 10x worse.
Allowing the presumption is very clearly not well-correlated with safety.
You are also conveniently leaving it the per-capita figures, with US being at 14.2 per 100k while countries like Norway, Sweden, and Finland being at 2.x, and Europe as a while being at 6.7.
So sure, "10x more" might be an exaggeration, but "2x more" is fairly accurate and even a claim of "7x more" is arguable.
I used this statistic because yours is like saying the US is richer than Switzerland, if you don't divide by the number of people. Pretty irrelevant.
There is no point comparing a country that drives everywhere with a country that doesn't using a metric that doesn't account for this difference.
Unless the argument is that driving everywhere is a stupid and irresponsible way to operate a society.
It is enough to say absolutely nothing, and request the government to prove its case.
If someone shot a person with my gun, I would invoke the fifth amendment, and ask the government to prove who did it beyond a reasonable doubt.
You're not going to roll on whoever really did it (assuming you know), and trust your fate to a jury understanding presumption of innocence, and being convinced of "reasonable" doubt, without you saying a word in your own defense? Most people would not unless they had an iron-clad alibi, but if they did, they wouldn't be getting charged in the first place.
Sounds nice on paper, but unless you have an absolutely airtight alibi that's a great way to end up in jail. Oh, you were alone at home all night? Well, your neighbor is pretty sure they heard you come home unusually late, and a witness saw someone who kinda-sorta looked like you run away from the crime site, and the victim was sorta-kinda involved in your social circles, and there's video of victim bumping into you a few weeks ago in a bar and you reacting in what could be interpreted as an aggressive way - and it is your gun...
Or you could tell them who you loaned the gun to. Your choice.
And sounds like a great way to plead guilty to a lesser crime, but IANAL.
Is it appropriate to compare murder and running a red light given what you know about the civil implications of 5A?
Only in criminal contexts. In civil contexts your silence can absolutely be an adverse inference. Usually these red-light cameras are civil penalties, not criminal (fines with no points). The judge here seems to be saying that these are "quasi-criminal" because, uhh, I guess there are penalties.
I think there are circumstances where this is true, but I don't think it's true in the general sense. And I really don't think red light cameras, which are incredible for public safety and a really fair enforcement tool, are a good example of a civil rights violation.
(EDIT: I should note that you also have a right to remain silent when questioned by the police- and since they won't know who to charge, there will likely not be a court case to call you to testify at)
5th amendment protections are much weaker for civil cases though.
Now, per the judge's ruling in this case, red light tickets are actually quasi-criminal, not purely civil, so the standards of criminal law might need to be applied.
Running a red light is not remotely equivalent to shooting someone with a gun, get a grip
Unlike the US, the EU is a collection of fully sovereign countries.
Why shouldn't we?
That's not necessarily true. What if it's a shared car in your family and you weren't home to see who took it?
This comment is the tech equivalent to "falsehoods programmers believe about <thing>"... real life does not fit into such neat boxes.
I'm not arguing it isn't, but the thought exercise is: does it make sense for the government to take people's money if the accused can't prove it wasn't them driving the car based on a police accusation (also with the threat of jail time if you don't pay)?
I don't think that's "normal", personally.
e.g. checking your calendar/diary, looking through receipts or bank statements to work out where you likely were.
There's also a requirement that a request for information is sent within 14 days for minor incidents like speeding or red light violations, so it's not like you have to work out who was driving on a Tuesday morning three years ago.
I gave her the citation and she called the cop who issued the citation and asked him who was driving at the time. He answered that a man was driving, and she told him he issued the citation to her, a woman. Her first name is one letter away from a male first name, so I’m guessing the cop saw it and assumed it was me and not her.
He got frustrated and told her to go ahead and rip the citation up since he wrote it to the wrong driver, she told him she’d show up to court and the judge would instantly dismiss the ticket due to the officer pulling over a man and issuing the citation to a woman, so he canceled it. He didn’t want to look like a complete fool in front of a judge.
Not once did he ask who was actually driving because he knows she is never going to tell him and he can’t force her to reveal that it was me.
Note that not once did you mention that you were innocent.
Why would you presume GP was drunk?
Also, it's completely common and safe to drive slightly over the speed limit in some circumstances, and in many parts of the US it's exceedingly rare for people to drive below the speed limit as you suggest. In many places the tickets are essentially written more for not seeing the cop and slowing down than for actually doing 78 in a 65.
There really is no difference between "who drove through a red light" and "who scratched the bumper while parking" here - how do you currently solve the latter one?
In short: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ef/1994-_Motor_vehicle_traffic_deaths_in_road_accidents%2C_by_country.svg/1920px-1994-_Motor_vehicle_traffic_deaths_in_road_accidents%2C_by_country.svg.png
Same as parking enforcement. Goes against the car, not an individual. So the financial responsibility will be assigned, but no punishment.
Why? IMHO, I shouldn't have to. It's the police's job to make sure they have the right person.
For speeding there's a website where you can view photos and a certificate showing the equipment was calibrated recently, and you can admit or nominate another driver (or you can do it via paper forms)
But also traffic cameras here generally take frontal pictures, so typically the only way you can get away with claiming it wasn't you is if they are very lazy / not interested in investigating further.
It's basically "innocent until proven guilty". Red light cameras turn that assumption around since if your car gets ticketed it is assumed you are "guilty until proven innocent".
As someone else said, this only works against self-incrimination? If you say it wasn't you then you need to testify or get prosecuted?
Second, you can still generally invoke the 5th amendment during testimony even if you already claimed someone else did it. You aren't under oath until said testimony, so it still protects against you having to choose between committing perjury or self-incrimination, and doing so cannot be used as evidence of either.
And you plead the 5th after going under oath. And you can't just plead the 5th to any question. If the prosection puts you under oath and asks you your name, you can't plead the 5th to that
5th amendment protections can include questions of identity, if the question of identity is relevant for incrimination. Like, if the government has a warrant for "Joe Smith", you're not required to testify whether that's you. It's usually a waste of time since could just prove it with the non-testimonial evidence that lead to your arrest, but the protection does exist.
The judge in this case disagreed, because the red light infraction was not a simple civil fine but quasi-criminal, e.g. points on drivers license, possibly resulting in suspension, etc.
The structure of this whole thing is to avoid having to do an actual investigation. They could subpoena the car owner's phone records for instance. Instead they choose to hide behind bureaucracy and offer you an off ramp in the form of a lower payment to make it all go away.
Do you know you can be licensed to drive a vehicle without owning one, and similarly, own one without being licensed to drive it?
Why would the owner of the property be responsible for someone else's actions with that property?
The owner isn't responsible for the drivers actions, but they are required to name the driver. (Or declare the car stolen etc.)
(At least in much of Europe.)
But for the purposes of traffic tickets, yea, its ridiculous. It also has a lot of faults. I got a traffic ticket from a red light camera for a car I owned when I was stationed in California. The ticket came to me in Oregon 5 years AFTER I traded that vehicle in (I traded it in right before moving to Oregon) and the traffic cam ticket was from Texas, a state I've never driven a vehicle in. My only presence in Texas has been being in the airport in Dallas. The ticket was also for a year prior to when I received it. So I hadn't owned it in 4 years when it ran a red light in Texas.
Most camera tickets are either civil moving, or civil non-moving. Civil moving are against a person and civil non-moving are against the vehicle. Neither of which case does 5th amendment protect you from incriminating yourself, and neither of which does it require prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
Says who? If the car is mine, I am free to do with it whatever I like (of course, excepting criminal acts). I do not owe anybody an account of what I - or the care - did at any particular moment. If the car was used in the commission of a crime, it's up to the prosecution to prove I had something to do with it. If they think I know who did it - prove it and prosecute me under the law. You can't just prosecute because you think I should know, that's not how proper law works - otherwise every cop in the country would be 100% sure who they caught is the criminal - because why not, if it's enough for conviction, why work harder!
> If someone shoots a person with your gun, you gonna say it wasn't you and expect them not to question any you further?
They can question all they like, but to secure a criminal conviction, they must prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that I was the person who did it. Otherwise you get no conviction. If they strongly suspect I did it, they would find a proof - but the fact that I owned a gun is not that proof (for one, guns can be easily stolen, and frequently are).
That said, I did at times get smaller fine and less severe consequences from a speeding ticket by just pretending I am going to go to court (I didn't really want to, I wanted smaller fine :) - because policemen do not like to waste time in court either - so they would agree, that if I do not try to deny I did it, and do not force thus them to go to court and testify, they would agree to less severe violation (while still costing me $$, just not as much as it could). That's totally a thing, at least in the US. The risk, of course, if you are an ass about it and piss off the police officer, they'd say to heck with it, I'll go to court, and you'd have to go to court too, and as per above, you'd get punished more severely. So, always be polite, and it will be to your benefit.
As for automated speeding tickets, I'm not a huge fan of it. Too many cases of this system being wrong or abusive.
The arguing about having a constitutional right to drive bad boggles the mind, road deaths in the US are high, compared to civilized nations. Wikipedia states it's 14.2 deaths per 100000 inhbitants, that's between Sierra Leone (13.8) and Angola (15.0). For comparison, India has 12.6 traffic deaths per 100000 citizens and the worst country in Europe is Greece at 6.1.
The right metric is death per citizen, not per mile, because it's about the number of people who have lost a family member or friend.
When you get around exclusively on two wheels (motorcycle and bicycle) bad drivers are a direct safety threat. Even cagers ought to be careful about being permissive with red light running, side-on crashes are remarkably deadly for the one who got hit in the door because there is not much structural protection or space on the side of the vehicle.
I don't have to prove who was driving. I don't have to prove I wasn't the one driving. The state has to prove that I was the one driving.
>If someone shoots a person with your gun, you gonna say it wasn't you and expect them not to question any you further?
I don't expect them not to question me further and that's not what this is about. This is about whether your car running a red light is proof, in and of itself absent any other facts, that you ran a red light in your car.
>This is how it works in Poland
This is not how it works in the US
>I assume, most/all of EU and the rest of the world.
You assume incorrectly
There is no such requirement.
Why? Americans liberated themselves from this kind of relationship with the government hundreds of years ago.
Sure, but they have no right to issue you a ticket without proving you broke the law. Same as in the gun case: they have every right to question you, but they can't convict you for murder based solely on evidence that it was your gun that killed the victim.
By my understanding, though, this case wasn't about a citation to appear in court, it was about automatic issuance of a fine + points on the driver's license of the owner of a car filmed blowing past a red light. Of course, you can sue the government to contest the penalties, but unless you do, you are liable for even worse penalties if you don't pay.
The US is a very big place. And in this place, we have fifty (!) different states. That's fifty different sets of rules relating to owning and driving cars -- nearly twice as many as the EU has member nations.
A Florida judge might decide that red light camera tickets are unconstitutional, while an Arizona judge might decide that they're completely OK. These two very different rulings can co-exist, without conflict, potentially forever.
Each state doing their own thing independently of the others is just how we roll here.
A sane and rational person might reasonably conclude that this situation is literally insane -- and they may be right! -- but it is this way anyway.
(And it is this way by design.)
I don't believe the founders intended as much federal oversight as we currently have. It was supposed to be self-governing states with a few exceptions. So much of the constitution is to limit the feds.
People's spouses and kids drive their cars. I've lent cars to friends before. Unless you've got some kind of log book, you might not know (or even remember) who was driving at any given moment or location.
> you need to plausibly explain why was someone operating your car while you were not aware of it.
This is the point of the judgement, under US law it seems that you don't need to plausibly explain anything, the authorities need to be able to show who was driving as the penalty is pseudo-criminal.
> I assume, most/all of EU and the rest of the world.
Under UK law which is much less definite about the state proving who was driving, one must make a good faith effort to identify the driver. But my Father got into a situation that took months to resolve when a speeding ticket arrived. The photograph of the driver didn't capture the head and was otherwise too blurry to identify from the body. It's a month after the fact on a road they both drive down frequently, and they only have one car. Was it him or his wife driving? Nobody knows.
The primary vehicle owner is not allowed to just assume responsibility for the ticket, because the liability for the offence is with the specific driver. Giving the wrong information is an offence itself, because people have tried those sorts of tricks to (for example) give penalty points to their spouse and avoid a ban.
So ... what do you do?
It's possible to take such cases to court in the UK and receive a not-guilty verdict if the vehicle owner can show a good faith effort has been made to identify the driver but there is no reasonable way of doing so.
Lol your "Tool" analogy breaks down here.
Its not the responsibility of the defendant to prove their innocence, no matter how you want to twist it.
> expect them not to question any you further
Wow. No one expects you to not be questioned, but for questioning to take place before punishment because duh.
Build a case, test it. Not issue fines based on an assumption.
This is an absurd assumption. I own many cars. Often, I'll borrow a car to a friend, I'm generally totally OK if they borrow it to other people. I don't care, and should not have to care, who those people are.
Also, for what it's worth, the government has no idea who owns any of my cars. EU registration certificates are typically not proof of ownership (are they in any EU country? I suspect quite possibly not). At best a government might be able to figure out the registered keeper of my vehicle, but they're not going to know anything about who drives the car.
>If someone shoots a person with your gun, you gonna say it wasn't you and expect them not to question any you further? Not very no-brainer, is it?
If I say "it wasn't me" and refuse to answer further questions, I would expect them to stop asking me pretty quickly. Being excessively bothersome about asking further questions would be a clear violation of the ECHR.
> In the order, the court found that red-light camera cases, although labeled as civil infractions, function as “quasi-criminal” proceedings because they can result in monetary penalties, a formal finding of guilt, and consequences tied to a driver’s record.
Which seems to just relabel any fine from the government as a criminal matter?
IMO when you register the vehicle for the right to drive on public roads, you are entering into an agreement that you will be responsible for following the rules of the road, and for lending the car to people who also do so.
Similarly, if I register a firearm legally, and then lend it out to anyone who asks, regardless of whether they follow the law, I don’t think it would be crazy to hold me financially responsible if a shooting happens with my gun.
States have had to write laws for this to be a criminal matter. Before then it was a civil matter, but it was individuals against individuals and not state against individuals.
>Which seems to just relabel any fine from the government as a criminal matter?
It wasn't exactly about the fine, but points on a license I believe.
"Preponderance of the Evidence" which is probably used for traffic cases means only "more likely than not" (or about 51% certainty).
Still, seems to me that it is reasonable to prove who did such violation. Maybe photo could identify person. Or maybe other data could be requested like phone location data. Doesn't seem unreasonable or high hurdle. Probably not cost effective in every case.
And yes, very likely some people would abuse it to get out of traffic tickets. I'd rather have that than constitutional due process protections eroded. We're not doing super-great on that anyway, we don't need to do worse, and if some scoundrel occasionally not paying traffic ticket is a price we have to pay to avoid that, I am fine with it.
Some examples that come to mind:
Look how the exception for searches at border crossings has expanded.
The use of actions against licenses for behavior that has nothing to do with the license.
The use of permits to get companies to do things only marginally related to the purpose of the permit.
The encouragement of universities to expel those accused of criminal acts--just because the punishment isn't jail should not mean the state can hand it off to a kangaroo court.
Pressuring financial companies to cut ties with disliked things. (For example, getting Steam to remove games with any whiff of incest. Either declare them illegal or don't take action against them!)
[1]:https://caticketking.com/help-center/photo-red-light-help/photo-red-light-defenses/
I disagree completely. This is how speed and red light cameras operate in my country. If you weren't the one driving, it's straight forward to show that. The other party can admit to the offence or you can present evidence including the camera itself. The burden is low. Camera infractions do not carry license demerit points because of this ongerent uncertainty.
What's the alternative? Use even more valuable police resources to issue these tickets? Or just not penalize dangerous infractions?
These US states considered them moving infractions with points. Now the state must adjust by removing points or doing its due diligence.
Perhaps needing to show these are dangerous infractions should come first?
Probably a lot of other issues arise from that. If your car gets towed for being illegally parked, what if you just say you didn't park it there? Seems like a similar violation to a red light ticket.
However, I agree with Florida on this; the onus should be not be on the accused to prove innocence after a citation is issued. Feels like a 'call us to unsubscribe' time-wasting dark pattern.
That said, if merely being the owner of a tool is sufficient to be guilty of whatever infraction someone else performs with said tool, that has 2 problems beyond the whole "proving your innocence" debate:
1. Why stop climbing up the chain at the current owner when you could keep climbing and say it's all the fault of the manufacturer? I jest, but this illustrates why, despite my first paragraph, it's indeed only sensible that the driver be at fault, so the government must prove who was driving.
2. Why treat cars differently from, say, weapons?
Which is better than the HN title.
For one, that was Florida. In California there's the "Permissive Use" rule which means you are at least partially responsible for who you lend your car to. If they get in an accident, you can be held partially liable.
There's also "Negligent Entrustment" if it can be proved you knowingly loaned your car or gun to someone intoxicated, unlicensed, etc...
Businesses are generally supposed to take responsibility for their employees. That might sound obvious if the business is FAANG but it's far less obvious to a single person coffee-shop or flower stand who hires their first employee who then spills hot coffee on a customer.
Parents are liable for their kids on many (most?) cases
I think another is where a someone goes to bar, drinks too much, the bartender gets charged.
Rather than just fight the cameras, what solution would you suggest? Just saying "more officer enforcement" doesn't seem valid as budgets are shrinking, applicants are shrinking, and people are dying from reckless drivers.